In a time where prog rock often feels like a dusty relic solely for the niche music fans—Brazilian-American composer Miguel Kertsman drops his new album Paradoxes like a time-warped Moog module, humming with the analog ghosts of ’70s ambition, creativity, and pure mind altering energy.
Released October 3, this 15-track concept odyssey clocks in at a potentially deliberate 66 minutes, weaving astrophysical riddles, mathematical mind-bends, and the quiet absurdities of human squabbles into a sonic experience. The full album is all played live-in-the-space on original vintage instruments, along with drums, bass, guitars, and vocals, captured through only a few microphones.
Kertsman, the genre-hopping savant who’s scored Olympic fanfares and London Philharmonic symphonies while moonlighting in jazz dens, circles back to his childhood Yes and Pink Floyd obsessions here—not as nostalgia bait, but as a defiant lens for our fractured present and future.
The album uncoils from the brooding opener “Enclosed Pathways,” a 6-minute synth swirl of Minimoog drones and Mellotron sounds that traps you in a velvet cage of tension, only to fracture into a journey with many possible pathways.
From there, “Postlude, Letting Go” strips to jazz-kissed piano elegies. Miguel Kertsman shows off his classical piano skills letting his fingers dance over dissonances like unresolved regrets. The next track, “Still Currents” floods in with an exotic mix of sounds, tones and tempos evoking both areas of calm and chaos.
The conceptual core hits in “Red Blue Sky” with thought provoking lyrics layered over sonic waves. This one is more soothing than some of the other tracks as soaring melodies lead the listener’s mind to spacy heights. Perfect for letting us think as we absorb the music. Released as a preview single, it has gained traction outside of just the prog rock niche outlets.
Mid-album pivots like “Jubilant Anxiety” with its frenetic keys chasing percussive glee, and “Fanfare in Quietude” pounding away at the start before transitioning to a classical feel worthy of an orchestra. This multi-dimensional sound from not only song to song but also verse to verse is inspiring for any songwriter that seeks freedom in their art.
The watery synths of “Atemporal Ocean” and the stormy “Postlude, Waterverse” fill out the space without jarring juts of sounds allowing us to slide deeper into the album with a relaxed mind, now wide open for whatever Miguel Kertsman has in store for us.
Big arena filling sound comes at us on “Then Is Now” as it warps time signatures into a Floydian fever dream. Closer “Postlude, De-clocking” unwinds it all with gentle key strikes evolving into atmospheric wind tones dissolving into freeform keys.
The beauty of Miguel Kertsman’s Paradoxes is that there are no straight lines. He doesn’t resolve; he revels in the rub, inviting replays that unearth new twists, turns, and knots. Cue it up under headphones, let the contradictions collide, and emerge a little less certain yet a lot more alive with a mind open to the world.
